Wrapping up the project

I just wrapped up my final four stories for The Tribune-Democrat’s American Heart Month project.
Sunday’s package includes a main story about cardiac rehabilitation and living with heart disease, along with two patients’ stories. Both patients were inspiring for me. They each had fought back from their initial, very-damaging heart attacks, only to be felled again by additional cardiac events and symptoms of heart disease.
While it would seem that maybe the rehab and lifestyle changes they embraced did not work, the experts say it probably saved their lives many times over.
“The disease is still there,” heart surgery Chairman Dr. Raj Devineni told me at Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown. “Rehab is getting them in a good lifestyle with exercise and healthy food so no matter what comes they can endure it.”
Then I got a call from Laurel Highlands Advance Imaging in Richland to brag about their fancy CT scanner that can show heart disease, or more importantly, the absence of heart disease. It can help patients avoid a more invasive, more costly catheter test, Medical Director Dr. Anthony Scuderi told me.
That story didn’t really fit into Sunday’s theme of cardiac rehab and living with heart disease, so we are holding it until Monday, when it will serve as this month’s installment of our regular Health Matters feature.
Well, that’s enough of a preview of coming attractions. I am still pretty psyched about the good news for DRS Laurel Technologies I was able to report this morning.
On the personal front, I came home last night to find Becky home from her second trip to the gym dancing in front of the TV with a video exercise-dance program. She even got me to try it for one song. I scored better than she did on her first try!
We gave in to our tradition of going out for wings on Thursday night, but we both ate about half our usual order, and brought the rest home. I may lunch on wings tomorrow.
I won’t say what the scales told me this morning, but I was pleasantly pleased to be down to the weight I have the goal of getting below by Monday.
Good luck this weekend, though.
Tonight should help. We are going with the Bethany United Methodist Church gang to Seven Springs Mountain Resort for a snow tubing outing. Maybe I’ll have to actually pull my tube back up the hill a couple times since we didn’t get to the gym today.
Tomorrow night is the Pink Ribbon Ball to support breast cancer treatment and research. We’ll see if the menu is low-fat and heart-healthy, which is also breast-cancer-healthy, by the way.
I’m working my monthly-ish weekend shift on Sunday, and plan to write another column for the paper to cap American Heart Month the way I started and then finish out this blog project on Monday.
Although I’m toying with idea of updating, perhaps less frequently, with future health-beat stories and updates on my own lifestyle improvement attempts.